This will be a short report in that I really don’t have a lot to report on. Yesterday all of our women were eliminated in the first session. This is the first time this has happened to Team USA at the World Championships, and left me with an afternoon and evening open. My roommate Larry Slater wanted to see the old city to take some photographs and I offered to serve as amateur guide since I had gone there the day before competition began. Larry is responsible for most of the U.S. photos here; you can see his photographs at
http://lbsphoto.smugmug.com/Olympic%20Wrestling/361752.Yesterday evening I went to a FILA banquet with Jim Ravannack, Stan Dziedzic, his wife Arlene and Hank Goldman where we sat at an all English speaking table that included representatives from Australia and Canada. It was nice having conversations that did not involve hand gestures and simple one-word phrases. At the banquet Stan Dziedzic presented awards to the current inductees into FILA’s hall of fame.
Today’s session is going much better. Kristie Marano is our first and only woman to reach the finals, where she will wrestle last year’s world champion Stanka Zlateva for this year’s title. Katie Downing lost in the semifinals and needs to win her next match to claim the bronze. Sara Mc Mann lost her first match of the day to Kaon Icho, but since Icho has advanced to the finals Sara will get the chance to wrestle back through the Repechage.
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Update #1: Both of the U.S. women wrestling in the Repechage won their matches to advance to the bronze medal match! In about an hour, we will have three wrestlers looking to medal at these World Championships. Hopefully, before most of you wake up this Sunday morning, we will have added three medals to our totals (one gold and two bronze). Wouldn’t be a bad way to end the 2007 World Championships!
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Update #2: One final first for me before I leave Baku. All three wrestlers today earned medals in their weight class, with Katie Downing and Sara Mc Mann receiving the bronze medal and Kristie Marano the silver. Today was definitely an improvement over yesterday. It is currently about 7 p.m. here in Azerbaijan. My flight will be leaving in nine hours and I'll arrive home about 27 hours later. I doubt that I'll be posting during the trip home and will probably need some time to recover and catch up on work, so this will be the last post for awhile. I hope you found the reporting enjoyable and informative!
Go USA!!
